The Need For Local Theatre

CRFT Keynote Speech Excerpt: Sharr White

The following is an excerpt from the keynote speech delivered by acclaimed playwright Sharr White at the inaugural Capital Region Festival of Theatre (CRFT), held on June 15, 2025, at the University at Albany’s Campus Center West. 

Sharr White. Photo provided by Capital Region Festival of Theatre (CRFT)

“It’s clear why the president and his people are against facts, and those who wield them: because grifters and criminals need a world of lies, like fish need water, so that they may swim amongst us with impunity.

This is why we sit here, stunned, like birds who have hit glass. We have flown headlong into an alternate realm where our identity as a people is now one of official cruelty. And official stupidity. Where devotion to nation, over a cult figure, is a betrayal. Where we. Are the enemy.

And this moment is why we need theatre.

Because you cannot actually fight lies with facts. You have to fight them with truth. Yes, there are those in this country bravely offering truths in point-by-point refutations of Trump’s corruption, cruelty, and stupidity.

But what theatre offers ...is a different truth….

…Trump, of course, more than almost anyone, knows the full power of culture. And especially the power of theatre. Why else would he commit a strongman-takeover of our national cultural shrine, The Kennedy Center?

Which, though like everyone else, brought me horror, it also left me chuckling at his dilemma: Now he’s got to program it. And the thing about arts programming is that it’s awfully hard to find material written in support of tyranny. And even harder, if you can find it, to be able to sit through it.

Which leads me to the intrinsic importance, in this moment... of us. Of local theatre.

We all of course know the term Asymmetrical Warfare. It’s been practiced for eons against a more powerful occupier. It’s what drove us out of Vietnam. Iraq. Afghanistan. There is, in fact, a rule of occupation. Which is that, no matter what, an occupier will be resisted. And make no mistake. We. Are. Being occupied.

So my challenge, to all of us. Now, during this first gathering of the Capital-Region Theatres, is to engage in Asymmetrical Cultural Action. Trump may be able to take over the board of the Kennedy Center. But he can’t do it to literally every theatre in America.

Our national symbols are full of the imagery of many small entities banding together to create an unstoppable singular: The thirteen stripes, the fifty stars, on the flag. Ironically, the symbol called the “fasces” appears on the Senate Seal, and used to appear on the dime. It’s an ancient Roman symbol depicting a singular powerful ax created from a bundle of many sticks. It symbolizes E PLURIBUS UNUM: From many, one.

It’s also where we get the term... fascism.

In these times, however. And in dealing with tyrants. The crucial lesson to be remembered: is that motherfuckin’ ax can swing both ways. So our job, then. Is to band together... and swing it.

I have a deep, gnawing hunger. To understand what is happening to us. I have a bewilderment, an anger, a rage, that I need help expressing. And I have a tremendous need to roar with laughter over a tyrant’s comeuppance.

The explorations of these needs... are the enemies of totalitarianism. We must be the homes for them.

Let us become ants in the ears of the monster. Let us be the biplanes swarming King Kong. A few of us may be swatted. But he can’t get us all.

And even if he could. Even if he could retract funding for every organization. Even if he could padlock every door to every stage. Theatre. Will. Happen.

It will happen in living rooms. It will happen in garages. It will happen around kitchen tables. And parks. On sidewalks. In protests. In front of National Guardsmen. And marines. And on courtroom steps. And in front of the White House itself. 

We must Mock. Poke. Prod. Examine. Expose. Discourse. Be the dream. And now, more than ever, be the truth. Above the truth.”

-Sharr White